Updated Visual Studio IDE Plugin Now Available | Inflectra

Updated Visual Studio IDE Plugin Now Available

October 23rd, 2017 by inflectra

At Inflectra, we want to make you life as easy as possible, so you can get back to developing. That’s why, we've updated one of our popular developer plugins for SpiraTeam - our flagship ALM platform. You don’t have to worry about switching windows between your web browser and Microsoft Visual Studio IDE just to track what you have to get done. Our updated Visual Studio plugin provides a more streamlined way to review your assigned work and track progress. In addition, the latest version includes support for the SpiraTeam contact manager introduced in v5.

What Does it Do?

The plugin for Visual Studio lets developers see their assigned work items in SpiraTeam without having to leave the comfort of their IDE. When you install the plugin and connect to SpiraTeam, the plugin will display the list of assigned requirements, tasks and incidents:

Double-clicking on any of the items will open it up quickly and easily in your current web browser. However when you have fixed the issue or implemented the new feature, you can save time by using the right-click option to get the ID of the artifact and copy to the clipboard:

which can then be pasted quickly into your source code commit message:

 

This lets you more easily link the work items with the files you check in, saving time and effort.

What's New in the Latest Version?

The latest version uses native Visual Studio storage for the SpiraTeam settings. This means that the SpiraTeam URL and project are stored inside the main Visual Studio .SLN file so that all team members can use the same settings. In addition, the user settings now save natively inside the Visual Studio .SUO file so that you don't have to worry about settings in different places.

We have also added support for the 'My Contacts' feature available in SpiraTeam v5.0:

We are considering adding a small indicator to the list of users to let you know whether they are online or not. Let us know if that would be a useful feature? For SpiraTeam v5.4 we're considering adding support for the XMPP instant messaging protocol, giving you more options for accessing the built-in Spira messenger.

The other new feature is the integration of the SpiraTeam Explorer with the Visual Studio properties window, allowing you to see more details of your assigned items within Visual Studio:

 

Here are more product integrations and plugins for SpiraTeam: Integrated Development Environments | Automated Testing Tools |  Unit Test Frameworks | Software Configuration Management | Requirements Management Systems | Bug/Defect Trackers

SpireTeam Visual Studio Plugin ALM IDE Microsoft